The use of self service terminals for customer transactions has continued to become more and more widespread because of the benefits these terminals offer for both merchants and customers. Proper implementation and use of self service operations allows a merchant to achieve labor cost savings, and the use of a self service option can increase customer satisfaction by decreasing customer waiting time. Food court transactions typically involve selections from relatively limited menus, rendering the selections particularly accessible to self service operations. In addition, food courts often become crowded during heavy shopping periods, rendering any increased efficiency such as might be provided by self service terminals and operations employing such terminals, particularly desirable during those periods.
Food courts are typically served by a number of vendors, collectively offering a wide variety of choices. Customers often eat at food courts in groups, and different members of the group frequently make their selections from different vendors, each member of the group conducting a transaction at a selected vendor. The members of the group then reassemble to eat. Prior art food court operations typically involve conducting the transaction with a vendor at that vendor's location, so that it is inconvenient for a single customer to make selections from multiple vendors, or for customers who wish to select from multiple vendors to collaborate while making their selections. For example, to order hot and sour soup, pizza, and ice cream, a customer might need to line up, order, pay, wait for preparation, and collect the order, at each of three separate vendors.